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Close, but no cigar. Corporations may be people in some legal respects, but they sure as hell can't vote. It's people like us who give politicians their jobs, and it's people like us who can just as easily take them away.

Close, but no cigar. Corporations may be people in some legal respects, but they sure as hell can't vote. It's people like us who give politicians their jobs, and it's people like us who can just as easily take them away.

Corporations are much more powerful than people: they are after all comprised of people, who can vote; they can "live" longer than people; they typically have much more money and resources than people, with which to lobby governments; and since there are generally many people working for a corporation, they have a lot more person-hours to spend on lobbying, etc. than a natural person.

Corporations may be people in some legal respects, but they sure as hell can't vote.

Sure they can, "one viewer, one vote" for elections, and "one lobbyist, one vote" for bills. Together, this simplifies to "one dollar, one vote", and we all know that corporations have many more dollars than individuals.

but seriously, if a corporation gets treated as a person in legal realms, it should get punished as one. I would love to see a "corporate death penalty" where they just reject the charter of a corporation, dissolving it, or place it in a "jail" so it can't do any business for 30 days, or whatever..

and that would just lead to "Generic Systems Co" folding and opening up the next day as "Ge dynamic Systems CO". A completely different entity which just happens to employ all the same people.

Now a death penalty which involves the board of directors or the biggest share holders actually being given the death penalty might mean something.Perhaps in cases where a company causes a vast number of deaths.

The problem is that a corporation doesn't act by itself. It acts at the direction of the board and management that direct it's actions. In essence, we do have the death penalty for corporations because any manager or director shown to have intentionally killed someone, will be subject to the death penalty just as you or I would.

Don't let this separate entity thing confuse you. It you take all the people out of a corporation, it will do exactly nothing. It won't sell anything, it won't poison anyone, it won't pollute the environment, it won't do anything. Now just as there are with most laws, there is a component called intent. If you intend to set out and do something illegal, you get the full charges pressed against you. If you unintentionally do the same, then you get lesser penalties. Being a corporation does nothing to hide the actions of the people involved and they will be held accountable to the same respect. At best, the corporation will end up being fined in addition to any penalties assessed to the employees responsible for any wrong doing.

Take this peanut problem we currently have where a shipment of tainted peanuts were used knowing they were bad. It's a criminal investigation that will whoever ordered the shipment to be used as well as anyone who knew about its condition but didn't report it to be exposed to criminal fines and penalties. If the order came from the owners themselves, the corporate veil will not protect them at all.

That's something else that people seem to ignore. The Corporate veil only protects the owners or shareholders who took no direct action in the illegal activity. A misconception is that if you incorporate, your bullet proof or something and that simply isn't true. If your actions cause damage, you are personally responsible too. If your business practices cause a bankruptcy, your personal assets aren't protected. If you are responsible for anything the corporation does, you can be and most likely are responsible. Now when you invest in something and take a silent approach and a worker comes in still drunk and kills another employee or kills a civilian not affiliated with the company, then you are separated from his actions even though the company might not be. That's the only protection a corporation offers someone.

Corporations may be people in some legal respects, but they sure as hell can't vote. It's people like us who give politicians their jobs, and it's people like us who can just as easily take them away.

Corporations don't need to vote; they have lots and lots of money. And they have JOBS waiting for the politicians when they leave politics. Did I mention money?

The problem is that the political system is rotten. If you can't be supported by a major political party, you can't get elected unless you have lots and lots of money. The political parties are corrupt, so to be supported YOU have to be corrupt.

"But wait, can't we just throw them all out?" Yeah, but the problem with this is that we all want the OTHER party thrown out first. The way the plurality system works, if you vote for a third party candidate, the OTHER party wins. So, whoever starts voting against the two party candidate closest to them in favor of a third party candidate will screw you in the end.

What is needed is a complete change in the way politicians are elected and serve. THAT won't happen because the POLITICIANS have to do it. They like the system the way it is, because it makes them wealthy and connected.

Abraham Lincoln when he acted like George Dubya - like a military dictator.

Lincoln went a lot further than GWB ever dreamed. If GWB had the cojones of Lincoln he would installed puppet governments in the state capitols of the blue states that opposed his policies and ordered the army to arrest the entire editorial board (well, except Kristol) of the New York Times.

People who blindly idolize Lincoln really need to open a history book and see what he was all about. I'm not convinced that forcing the South to remain a part of the Union at gunpoint was really worth it.

I do not believe it is your place to single-handedly eliminate this country's technological future by sneaking in an anti-net-neutrality provision at the conference committee.

You should leave that decision up to your colleagues by introducing a separate bill. You wield a very might sword, one whose power you seem to be unacquainted with.

Have some honor, respect, and dignity. For six of the last eight years, our country was plagued with a congress that did the sort of despicable things that I speak of - and you were thwarted from doing.

Take the removal of your provision from the stimulus bill as a sign: this stimulus bill has no place legislating communications policy. You are sabotaging this country's Internet future.

I should know, I work for one of our nation's largest telecoms and my team and I engineer the core networks that make the Internet possible.

Please hear my plea of openness and transparency - we, the People, expect - and should receive - more from our leaders than shadow amendments inserted into much needed legislation.

Because most people understand that it will kill e-commerce if website now have to pay for bandwidth to their servers and for the bandwidth to the end users (Which the end user is paying for already by the way).

We already have net neutrality. They want the ability to charge a website for bandwidth that their users are accessing. Now this might be silly but I assume people spending lot's of money lobbing for something only do so when they are planning to start doing it.

>>>She is trying to insert language to allow ISPs to "manage their network" to stop illegal file sharing and distribution of child pornography.

I repeat: When did Diane turn Republican? These two activities (protecting RIAA and superimposing Christian morality) are more like a Republican tactic. The founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson, would be ashamed.

While I support protecting children, I also recognize that nudity is not a sin and does not need to be censored. And neither does bittorrent; not all the traffic that flows peer-to-peer is illegal (as many ISPs falsely presume).

An ability for ISPs to collude with large commercial interests/government to simply suffocate small operators and individual websites, particularly of "inconvenient" to the ruling elites' contents, by selling all the "priority" bandwidth to large corporations/government and throttling the rest severely. This allows for censorship and creation of monopolies all under a pretense of "market forces" at work.

It would mean the end to all peer-to-peer applications, large chunk of Internet gaming, small scale VPNs etc by introduction of massive latency resulting from now legalized throttling of all "not sufficiently profitable" traffic.

Massive increase of costs for most commercial websites, which of course would simply be passed on consumers, which would in turn drive prices up for Internet commerce significantly, all with absolutely no improvement to the operation of these sites and with an overall deterioration of Internet service in general as mentioned above.

This started in 1913 with the passage of the Income Tax Amendment AND the Federal Reserve Act.

At this point, the government had a higher power - a bank - and the means to confiscate wealth at an alarming rate.

Things were quiet - even including the Great Depression, the only notable happening was the Fed grabbed some more power to prevent it from happening again (lets see how that worked out).

Then in 1945 Congress passed the Victory Tax act. This was an unconstitutional law that actually taxed people's individual wages. But in patriotic America, no one date question it, like the invasion of Iraq. The law was repealed two years later before anyone dare challenge it and replaced with one that was constitutional.

The precedent was set though - Through a Patriotic Campaign [the7thfire.com] people were convinced to pay taxes on their "wages". Forms were set up and (W-2, W-4, etc) and used to collect the unconstitutional tax. After the Victory Tax Act was replaced, the precedent had been set, and a large wage tax the database established. The forms were kept the same, so no one was the wiser.

Today you can read for yourself the constitutional definitions in 3401 [cornell.edu] and 3121 [cornell.edu] of title 26. Note the definition of wages" "employment", "United States", and "State". If you doubt the meaning of "United States" contrast it with 4612. [cornell.edu]

Further more, Senator Bailey, the biggest income tax proponent had this to say:"I have no hesitation in declaring that a tax on any useful occupation cannot be defended in any forum of conscience or of common sense. Totax a man for trying to make a living for his family is such a patent and gross injustice that it should deter any legislature from perpetrating it." 44 Congressional Record 1702 (1909)

Well, Senator Bailey had no idea just how bad things would get. After WWII, we had a great sense of accomplishment. But we found ourselves in a cold war, and quickly moved into the Korean and Vietnam wars. All the while the expectations and budgets increased.

We are incredibly guilty of this today. We have run up a $10T deficit, and we owe it to the Federal Reserve. Our money is has dropped to 1/25 its value, by moving from US Notes to Federal Reserve Notes.

It is our demands on the government that are to blame. Before we were all paying federal income taxes (and specifically the wage tax) there could be no consolidation of power in Washington DC. But now they have a vacuum into every household of America, called the wage tax which allows them to control both sides of the equation. This is very attractive target for lobbyists. Once you only have one city to work in, you have less to concentrate on and can do so much more effectively rather than persuade hundreds in state legislatures everywhere.

But still I continue to blame us. We must reject the idea of government being the solution. It has proven that unless it is war, it is not. All the solutions have come at a cost to future generations. They don't fix the problem they just sweep it under the rug for future generations. If we relied on government less, we'd not have to worry about these gross abuses of power because 1) they couldn't afford it. and 2) no one would pay attention.

Recently several states sent letters to Washington reminding D.C. that state sovereignty still exists:Washington State [wa.gov] Arizona [azleg.gov] Oklahoma [yourwebapps.com]

Why not just throw more cruft into this 'steal-from-us'...er....'stimulus' bill?

Hell, they already are sneaking things in like invading your medical privacy [wnd.com] , and laying the foundation for rationed health care [worldnetdaily.com] and was championed by writings by Tom Daschle and others.

Sure, why not go ahead and take net neutrality...and sneak a ton of other crap under the radar, and we need it FAST.

Sounds kinda like how we got stuck with a lot of crap from the old PATRIOT act, eh? I'm surprised they haven't come up with

Your sources are diverse and correct! Everyone knows Open standards for medical documents is a one way road to Socialism. Just ask anyone on slashdot what open standards does to a buisiness! It's evil, don't touch it! You don't have to read deep into Torvaldis' Das Penguinal to see that communism follows.

Your sources are diverse and correct! Everyone knows Open standards for medical documents is a one way road to Socialism. Just ask anyone on slashdot what open standards does to a buisiness! It's evil, don't touch it! You don't have to read deep into Torvaldis' Das Penguinal to see that communism follows.

Sarcasm isn't really a rebuttal. But then you knew that, right?

You could try reading Betsy McCaughey's [bloomberg.com] op-ed about the piece, or better yet, go read the actual bill [gpo.gov] in question yourself. And note that that web site is GPO (Government Printing Office), not GOP - I'm sure some dyslexic will misread it and accuse me of being a shill for the Republicans.

Point of fact: nowhere in the bill is an "open" standard for medical records referenced or called for.

Point of fact: In this bill, the government is appointing itself as the entity to ensure that everybody (yes, everybody - there don't appear to be any provisions for people who wish to opt out) has electronic medical records by 2014. The government has also tasked this bureaucracy with developing infrastructure to facilitate the exchange of those medical records.

When any agency (government or private) nominates itself as the caretaker of extensive private information about you, it's wise to have privacy concerns. I don't mean tin-foil hat conspiracy theories, I mean, there should be full & accurate disclosure as to what privacy controls are in place, so that the public can understand & offer feedback on the proposal.

The GP's last 2 sentences are actually spot-on. An economic stimulus bill is NOT the place for a tacked-on afterthought which creates a sweeping change to the country's medical landscape. There are legitimate privacy questions & concerns in the creation of electronic medical records, and to just stuff them into this bill stifles open & constructive debate on exactly what safeguards should be put in place.

Slashdot readers fumed over the PATRIOT act's potential for violating their privacy; this provision could have equally far-reaching impact on your private, personal medical records. So bottom line, I'm asking you to answer this one question:

WHY is the fact that the government wants to take full or partial control of your medical records NOT a cause for concern for you?

Please answer in a complete sentence that doesn't begin with either of these two phrases:
1) "Because President Obama says..."
2) "Well it's not like it's President Bush..."

I don't know, I'm finding myself more and more drawn to the ideas of David Brin [davidbrin.com] in regards to privacy. I think the ultimate answer in a world with the kind of computer technology we have (and will soon have) is to not try and fight the inevitable forms of electronic surveilance, but to make it so that the eye is omni directional. I think perhaps our focus should be on finding a way to make sure that politicians can not exempt themselves from tansparency, and in fact that they are subject to increasing levels of scrutiny compared to the scrutiny they level at us.

I think a good first step would be to hire an "archivist" who is tasked with following every congressperson and top level government official around and recording in video and audio (and making copies of all electronic and analog communications they make) everything that they do, every meeting they have, etc.

If they haven't done anything wrong, they have no reason to object, right?

Point of fact: In this bill, the government is appointing itself as the entity to ensure that everybody (yes, everybody - there don't appear to be any provisions for people who wish to opt out) has electronic medical records by 2014.

An economic stimulus bill is NOT the place for a tacked-on afterthought which creates a sweeping change to the country's medical landscape.

Converting the paper records to electronic form would indeed be an economic stimulus. It creates jobs for the nerds who design and build the systems. It makes the doctors more productive.

Who BUT the government would have the power to force this? Why would anyone WANT to opt out?

Slashdot readers fumed over the PATRIOT act's potential for violating their privacy; this provision could have equally far-reaching impact on your private, personal medical records.

WHY is the fact that the government wants to take full or partial control of your medical records NOT a cause for concern for you?

Please answer in a complete sentence that doesn't begin with either of these two phrases:1) "Because President Obama says..."2) "Well it's not like it's President Bush..."

Because the private sector won't do it on their own.

Ineffective record keeping is a problem. You can already see the benefits if you compare the VA system to private care, for example, since veterans tend to stick with the VA and thus have all their records in one place. The result is fewer problems like harmful drug interactions caused by one doctor not knowing what another has prescribed.

Private firms have little incentive to share records effectively, just like they have little incentive to pay for preventive care: it costs Company A today for a benefit that might come around in ten years, but by that time the patient might have moved to Company B.

I'm at work and a bit lazy..just went for the first hits I could get when googling the topics, which I heard on various tv news stations last night and this morning.

But indeed....a mandated electronic medical record system, that is accessible and controlled by the feds? Well, I think anyone can see the possibilities for abuse. Heck, I'm not thrilled with their other databases they have on people, like the no fly lists, and the soon to come RealID databases. Add that all in with total medical history, and govt. healthcare and voila....

Look into the writings [amazon.com] of the guy they wanted to BE in charge of health care, Tom Daschle. He's made statements "In my book, Critical: What We Can Do About the American Health-Care Crisis, I have proposed a Federal Health Board that would be a foundation from which we could address all three problems. In many ways, the Federal Health Board would resemble our current Federal Reserve Board for the banking industry."

Yeah, I think we've ALL see the great work the Fed has done with banking and all today, eh?

I"m also not thrilled with a committee deciding [reason.com] if I'm too old to get a particular treatment.

Sure, the medical record and collections thing looks pretty innocent as is stated in the bill, but, if you look at him wanting Tom in there to reform medical care, his beliefs, and all...no, I don't think it is much of a stretch to see what this might be laying the groundwork for...

Even if your state wanted to it couldn't put term limits on Federal offices. It was tried and SCOTUS shot it down [wikipedia.org]. We'd need a Constitutional Amendment to term limit these bastards. Given that the Congresscritters themselves get a vote on amendments through the typical process, we'll have to convince 2/3'rds of the state legislatures to call for a convention.

You just hit the nail on the head with regard to the core problem. Feinstein is a powerful force in Washington, and she'll probably only get better at underhanded manipulative tactics the longer she remains in power. Unfortunately, your voting population is either too stupid or too apathetic to care.

But the most notorious machine politicians are the ones who ALSO held perpetual office.

Wrong, the most notorious machine politicians are the ones that never got elected, the "kingmakers" if you will.

Term limits at least get rid of those.

Term limits empower machine politicians and take away the power of those who would defy them. A popular lawmaker can stand up against the machine, but it's for naught if he can't stay in office.

I don't see why you would be against term limits simply because they may be friendly to machine politicians in certain areas... there are better ways to address that particular situation.

Politicians who have the confidence of the electorate are the best deterrent to machine politicians. You cannot defuse the power of the politicians and expect it to flow back to the people. Instead, it flows back to lobbyists and party/machine politicians. In a representative democracy, the best place for the power to be is in the hands of the politician, rather than the back-door dealmaker.

Feinstein and many others will probably be facing primary challengers for the next election. We can certainly find better Democrats than these people.

The Senate is run almost entirely on seniority. No one is going to give up a Senator with that kind of seniority and replace them with someone of the same party unless the Senator gets convicted of a felony or something, and even then it's not certain.

Entrenched Senators only lose their seats when they retire or when there's a massive demographic shift in their district that moves more people of the opposition party in. The primaries are just a formality when a senior Senator is involved.

She was always something dragged out of a cesspool. I was in California during her run against Michael Huffington for the Senate. Lots of dirty tricks... Among my favorites: both agreed not to use notes during a televised debate. Feinstein had written notes on her hand, and when she gestured they could be seen by the television audience; Feinstein's camp revealed that Huffington's house had been purchased under a contract that stated that he would not turn around and sell it to a member of a racial min

I mean, I thought it was the Republicans who were destroying America and the Democrats were going to save us? You mean to tell me that they are all beholden to business interests? Say it it isn't so!

Ah, see? And yet again, because it's a Democrat party senator going against the./ grain, the little (D) mark after the name is absent from the intro blurb. Curious how that always happens. Whenever it's a Republican senator or congressman in the hot seat, that little (R) is right there to make sure everyone knows it. I've pointed this out before, and here it is again. Coincidence? Oversight? Not this many times it ain't.

1.) Slashdot editors are lazy2.) Everyone already knows Feinstein is a Democrat. She's one of the leaders of the party, and one of the people the Republicans are always complaining about. Anyone who pays attention to politics at all knows she's a Democrat.

I'm going to have to agree with you on this one. I gave up the label thing (and ended any personal party affiliation) long ago when I finally realized it doesn't really mean all that much, but this borderlines on FUD and it actually happens in quite a few places.

I mean, I thought it was the Republicans who were destroying America and the Democrats were going to save us? You mean to tell me that they are all beholden to business interests? Say it it isn't so!

Ah, see? And yet again, because it's a Democrat party senator going against the./ grain, the little (D) mark after the name is absent from the intro blurb. Curious how that always happens. Whenever it's a Republican senator or congressman in the hot seat, that little (R) is right there to make sure everyone knows it. I've pointed this out before, and here it is again. Coincidence? Oversight? Not this many times it ain't.

By browsing through the list of stories which mention a US Senator, there is no identifiable pattern of senators being identified by party. I see many instances of less-known senators of both parties being identified with their party affiliation, and many more instances of well-known senators of either party being mentioned without noting the party.

It is conceivable that a thorough statistical analysis would show some bias, but it is not at all obvious at a quick glance. The AC's post is demonstrably false as written. the R is not always noted, and the D does show up in a negative context (such as here [slashdot.org], or here [slashdot.org]).

The labels of democrat and republican are horribly uninformative; and people, including yourself, should stop labeling them so. Just because they label themselves one way or another doesn't make them non-politician. That's the label we should all agree on:). Lobbied Politician.

Feinstein is that special brand of Democrat coming from a state where there's almost no viable Republican challengers so she's free to give the American people the bird as much as she wants. There's rumors that Schwarzenegger might run against Barbara Boxer in 2010 though.

You know, as much as I like the spirit of net neutrality, I've always found it suspicious that the same./ers who tell the government to "keep out of my internets" are so supportive of giving the government more footholds in regulating the net.

Why? We don't want the government saying what can/can't be done online, and we don't want the ISPs doing that either. The preferred answer to the ISPs would be "vote with your wallet", but this doesn't work because the local governments like selling them monopolies.

The hypocrisy of the democrats who ripped on republicans and Bush and now ignore it when they do the EXACT same type of stuff just kills me.

My favorite was all the whining I heard from the far-left when Bush was selling the TARP plan by telling us how society was going to collapse if we didn't pass it. "Bush is just trying to scare us so he can raid the treasury!" they all said. I'm glad that Obama is above such fear-mongering to pass his agenda. He would never use loaded words like "catastrophe" [boston.com], would he?

To be fair, Bush's TARP plan was basically "put a giant pile of money on the table, turn your back, and whatever the banks want they can take". The Obama plan is far more directed and includes oversight as well as earmarks to reduce the chance that the money just goes directly into someone's pocket, never to be seen again.

Bush and Obama have both accurately described the economic conditions as disastrous. The potential fallout of inaction is huge.

Is massive government spending the best way to get us headed toward recovery? I don't know, but Bush thought so, and so does Obama. Props to Bush for sticking to his approach despite the lack of support from his own party. Props to Obama for not dismissing Bush's approach just because he's a Republican.

Both of these guys genuinely want the US economy to succeed. They are and have been deeply concerned about its current direction. Calling what either of them did fear mongering is unjustifed. They are trying to help people understand the extent of the problems, and motivate them to support what they believe to be a workable solution.

Because there are no rules at all as to how the conference committee should go about formulating the compromise bill.

Note that the compromise bill *does* have to be voted up or down (but no amendments) by both the House and the Senate afterwards. That is in fact the purpose of the conference committee--it resolves the paradox that the House and the Senate amend bills *separately* while they are on the floor, but must both vote in favor of an*identical* bill in order for that bill to advance to the President for his signing or veto. If the conference committee gets too cute in abusing their powers to write whatever they want, the chambers can vote not to pass it. It doesn't happen often, but it *does* happen, and almost the only time it happens is when the conference committee strays too far from making an actual compromise between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

I think if I were president I would veto virtually every bill that crosses my desk. Congress would have to demonstrate, through a 2/3rd override vote, that they really and truly want to make law. None of this "sneak amendments through the backdoor" shit.

Imagine how much money we would save with the multiple failed bills & therefore less money spent.

You're right of course, but you'll probably get modded into oblivion here. Not that the Republicans are any better, either. They're as guilty as the Dems for pissing away hundreds of billions in Iraq over the last six years.

Where's the party that wants to reduce the size of government, spend less, and hold people and corporations accountable for their own actions? The one that still believes if you touch a hot stove, it should hurt? I could care less what its name is as long as those things are in its p

Unlike the republicans, the democratic party has a lot of people with their own views.

Right... Because Republicans are just mindless automatons while the Democrats are the epitome of critical thought and non-partisanship. EastCoastSurfer's got it right. They're all crooks. You might want to do some reading into the history of the Democratic party.

Yep, by their own admission, in fact. I'm not sure how it happened, but I ended up on the RNC mailing list. The lastest message from Michael Steele (RNC chair) said, "The battle is joined. As you all know, the Republican Party is unified in our opposition [to the stimulus]"

This is a common republican theme: we are unified, and we fight. Sounds like mindless automatons to me...

Way to make it personal, asshole. I'm a college student so I can get away with charging 20 bucks an hour undercutting everyone else (high gas prices and an outdated website, you see; the website does no selling for me) and it's still a reasonable amount of money considering my expenses -- and I'm really good at what I do, if my continued referrals mean anything.

Discarding the politics of personal destruction and returning to the issues, it's silly of you to assert that only Democrats have dissonance within their ranks. There are many varied viewpoints in the Republican party, from the wacky (and IMO quite stupid) Creationists to the pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage Giuliani conservatives to the corrupt idiots like Ted Stevens who I'm happy to see go. People like me consider the Ted Stevenses and the Arlen Specters and the Olympia Snowes (the latter two of which supported this pork-laden stimulus package in the Senate) to be, as you say, wolves in sheeps' clothing.

And unfortunately, Barack was pitched to us as a messenger from fairy land sent to save us all, that he would magically make everything better. He can't even instill his own purported values of transparency, freedom of information and clean government in his own party members despite his sweeping election. There is no hope for them; indeed, I think they've started to rub off on him [bostonherald.com] -- there are no pork or earmarks in the stimulus bill, but there are special spending projects and shovel-ready construction projects and countless other Democrat special projects [wsj.com] that just can't wait to garner Democrat votes with government dollars.

Unlike the republicans, the democratic party has a lot of people with their own views

And those views are dead on arrival if they conflict with the views of the party/congressional leadership. The NY Times just had an interesting article [nytimes.com] about the oldest serving member of the House. Here's the interesting part:

More troublesome for Mr. Dingell has been the long-term trend toward ideological polarization, making the Democratic Party less hospitable for members with socially conservative views, like his support for gun rights. When redistricting pitted him against the more liberal Representative Lynn Rivers in a 2002 primary, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California sent $10,000 to Ms. Rivers.

Mr. Dingell survived. But like colleagues in both parties, he has chafed under Ms. Pelosiâ(TM)s speakership at the centralization of decision-making within the House leadership. "It started under Gingrich," he said, "and it continues today."

Unlike the republicans, the democratic party has a lot of people with their own views.

Ha! Almost spit my Mountain Dew all over my desk. If only a decent party had a chance in America... to claim that the Dems' federal politicians are better than the Republicans' or vice versa is shear wishful thinking. Seriously. Neither party is looking out for you at the federal level. There are the rare exceptions in both parties who actually have their heart in the right place, but those are few and far between.

That anyone ever thinks differently must lack critical thinking. The people in power are corrupt, and the weaker party, which happened to be in power last time, is going to swoop in and fix everything.

Fuck, half the problem is that this country wasn't set up as a democracy, but a republic. But then it started with electing the president directly instead of state legislatures deciding themselves, sending electors that were little more rubberstamps, and then an amendment where the senators get voted in by the people, instead, again, of the electors deciding. The republic originally envisioned would have had several layers, with people voting the bottom local layer, and then those layer of people voting up another level, etc.

The net effect is that, I as a lone and insignificant voter, instead of just voting for a few people that I know better on a local people - get swamped with choices on every level - local, state, federal. Who has the time for it? You know how people complain about choice and linux distros? This is 100x worse. The end effect is that people start voting down the line for parties. National Parties evolved.

Such a system also gives the mainstream media undue power, puppet strings whereby to agitate voters into their agendas who in turn wail to their politicians, all the way up to Senators and Presidents, about the latest insignificant thing. It's not a good way to keep government limited if people always demand things from the government. If senators, as originally, were appointed by state legislators or governors - there would be focused on more than winning the next election.

Unfortunately, while Diane Feinstein is a great democrat in other areas, she is firmly on the side of copy protection, DRM, the RIAA, MPAA, and media distributors in general. This has nothing to do with the Democrat take over of congress, or going back on campaign promises, Diane Feinstein has always been this way. Even though I'm a hard-core democrat, I voted against her in the elections every time when I lived in California (I've vote instead for the Peace and Freedom party). Here's the form letter I got back in response to my letter I sent to her complaining about some new draconian copyright law:

Thank you for writing to me about music file-sharing. I
appreciate your thoughts on this important topic and welcome the
opportunity to respond.
I have always believed that the protection of intellectual
property rights is vital to a flourishing economy -- particularly in
California. As new technologies, such as P2P file sharing, have
developed over the past few years it has become increasingly
difficult to protect intellectual property from illegal copying and
distribution. I believe that we must work to prevent the creation of
digital copies of copyrighted works that can be illegally distributed
throughout the world.
The "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004" (S
2560) is currently pending consideration in the Senate Judiciary
Committee, of which I am a member. I will certainly keep your
thoughts in mind should this legislation come up in the Committee.
Again, thank you for writing. Should you have any further
comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington,
D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

There you have it, she's pretty much in the media content protection camp as far as she can go and she's always been that way. Meh... I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that the senator who draws her financial support from Hollywood would be interested in "protecting" copyright. It doesn't mean I like it any more and I do wish she would go away.

She needs to be investigated for her conflict of interest between her position as chair on the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee and her husband's firms receiving billions of dollars of defense construction contracts. Oops. She's the chair of the Senate Rules Committee. I guess there won't be any investigations.

AMEN! She started voting in line with George Bush on everything from military spending to retroactive immunity for telcos after her husband was awarded a $50 billion contract for reconstruction in Iraq. She's been a Lieberman Democrat for a while now, and she shows no sign of slowing down.

The Democrats have always been in the pocket of RIAA/MPAA/Hollywood types. Look up Hillary Rosen if you have any doubts. Republicans have scr*w*d up the country but on this issue, they have always been a better alternative. Not because they are more moral or anything, but because they are not as beholden to the Hollywood set.

Yes, to regulate a given industry, you want the party who isn't in the pocket of that particular industry. Generally that's the Democrats, as the Republicans are in a lot more pockets, but there are some exceptions, and Hollywood is one.

Actually the Clintons were considered the oil company's best friends when Bill was in office. Read "Hear No Evil, See No Evil" by Robert Baer for a fascinating blow by blow account of the author being ordered to help the oil companies by the Clinton administration.

One man's pork is another man's infrastructure spending. What Republicans want is 100% tax cuts. Tax cuts (from the evidence of the last few times we have tried this) do not return as much in terms of economic activity as infrastructure spending does (the comparison is $1.02 vs $2.10 per dollar spent). And that totally ignores the modern reality of globalized economic interactions.

More damningly, since there is not much manufacturing left in the US, whatever money you choose to spend out of the tax cut

A Congresswoman from California that received huge campaign contributions from people in the entertainment industry trying to back-door language to "protect" her primary contributors from the eebbils of copyright infringement? No way! And throwing in the "protect the children!" language. Next you'll tell me that she wants to force content on radio stations.

She'll be 79 years old when her current term ends. I don't know that she cares about future votes. And by the way, how many 75 year olds do you know that you would feel comfortable dealing with all of these issues?

Republicans always get blaimed for everything bad that happens in this country. The sad thing is most Americans don't even know which party is in control in Washington. While the Republican hating masses were giving Congress a single digit approval rating, most of them didn't even realize it was the Democrats who were in charge of Congress. And now that there's no opposition in the White House to their stupidity this is what we get. Career politicians protecting the rights of special interests and screw the average citizens. And everyone stands around waiting for Obama to waive his magic wand and everyone gets free healthcare and nobody will ever have to pay for rent or gas and we can all eat cake and ice cream for the rest of our lives. Wake me up when it's over.

Republicans always get blaimed for everything bad that happens in this country. The sad thing is most Americans don't even know which party is in control in Washington. While the Republican hating masses were giving Congress a single digit approval rating, most of them didn't even realize it was the Democrats who were in charge of Congress

Republicans: in charge of the House from 1994-2006, in charge of the Whitehouse from 2001 until three weeks ago, majority of the Senate from 1995-2006 except for a brief period in 2002 when Jeffords' defection gave the Democrats a 1 member lead (and I guess three weeks when Al Gore was still VP and it was briefly split). Supreme Court essentially narrowly split, although you can credibly argue that the Roberts appointment made the court on balance Republican to some approximation. This is essentially Republican control from 2001 until early 2007.

Democrats: majority in the house from 2006, essentially split Senate from 2006, bare majority for Democrats given Sanders and Lieberman's caucus choice. But given the narrow split, the veto stick held by a Republican presidency, and the composition of the Democratic majority (esp. blue dogs in conservative districts), "control" is a pretty tenuous term for even the two houses of congress. Meanwhile, Republicans still hold the presidency and with Alito's appointment the court becomes arguably more Republican.

Who doesn't understand which party has been in control in Washington?

In 2-4 years, the Democrats won't have that excuse anymore, and accountability is important. I have no problem with people calling them out on specific policy positions and voting them out next election if that's what it takes.

But it's ludicrous to assert that Democrats are primarily responsible for the current state of things. And it's a little extra stupid to accuse others who apparently have a better grasp of recent history than you do of not understanding what's going on. U.S. policy for the last decade has been dominated by the Republicans, there's no other reasonable conclusion. Whether the Democrats can do any better is an open question, but it's really only been askable for about three weeks.

The problem with having no network neutrality as the broadband industry currently stands is that there isn't any regulation. Most Americans have one (maybe two, if they're lucky) choices of ISPs and that is it. If your area or apartment building only has Comcast and you don't like the way Comcast is prioritizing traffic, too bad. You're stuck paying the monthly fee for a service that you're not satisfied with, and there's nothing you can do about it.

It isn't about the menial hops between you and Google. It's about ISPs deciding who can and cannot have a meaningful presence online.

Actually net non-neutrality affects ALL hops that your packets take, it's just that the ISP is a choke point where they can demand bribe money from specific destinations, like google for instance, in order to connect to those users. It's a classic shakedown, because ISPs are already getting paid for the bandwidth used and there is nothing special about a given destination except how much money they have.

But it doesn't stop there. AT&T can say to Qwest that they'll need an extra cent per MB of traffic routed to google. Then instead of routing being a 'simple' issue of getting packets to the destination address, it adds weights like 'at minimal the cost' or 'cheapest in 0.X seconds' and so on.